Get one, and you’ve got a fighting chance at the playoffs. Get two, and you might make a deep postseason run.

Round up three, as the Miami Heat, Oklahoma City Thunder, Boston Celtics and, now, the Los Angeles Lakers have done, and you are a serious championship contender.

And then there are the Suns.

Even they agree that there isn’t a so-called “superstar” on the roster. Maybe not even an All-Star.

“We have a young team, a lot of talent,” said playmaker Goran Dragic. “We just have to try to get better every day, and you never know — maybe somebody in the future becomes that star.”

In the meantime, it was interesting to watch the club’s preseason home opener on NBA TV and hear Portland’s television broadcast team of Mike Barrett and Mike Rice make note of all the empty seats and point out they couldn’t remember the last time the Suns didn’t have a “star” player as a draw.

We can help them with that.

In 2003-04, the Suns traded Stephon Marbury, the closest thing they had to a star at the time, to the Knicks and fired coach Frank Johnson. With much of the same team that would play in the Western Conference Finals a year later, the Suns went 20-41 under Mike D’Antoni, including 17-31 after trading Marbury.

They also unloaded two often-injured former stars, Penny Hardaway and Tom Gugliotta, clearing the way to sign their new superstar, Steve Nash, in free agency.

Instant excitement followed.

Back in 1996, the Suns traded their disgruntled super-duper-star Charles Barkley to the Houston Rockets. In return, they got a couple of second-round draft picks, two good players in Robert Horry and Sam Cassell, and a couple of solid role players in Mark Bryant and Chucky Brown.

But no star. Not even close.

The Suns started the next season 0-13, Cotton Fitzsimmons told Danny Ainge the coaching job was all his, and they only kept alive a string of playoff appearances that would reach 13 years by using some of those Houston pieces to pry All-Star playmaker Jason Kidd from Dallas.

So, can a team win in the NBA without a so-called star and go-to guy? And if so, how?

“For one thing, you’ve got to be mentally tough,” said guard Jared Dudley. “You’ve got to have your chemistry at a high level, very similar to Philadelphia. No big-time stars, but they play hard as hell. Defensively, they get after you.

“You’ve got to have good depth because if you only have five or six guys contributing, it’s going to be tough. With 10 guys contributing, you can wear teams down.

“It can be done; it’s just a lot harder.”

Suns coach Alvin Gentry points to the 2004 NBA champion Detroit Pistons as Exhibit A. The Pistons won the title with players such as Chauncey Billups, Rasheed Wallace, Richard Hamilton and Ben Wallace.

We might argue that at least those guys all were All-Star-quality, if not superstars, but we’ll go with him on this.

“They won with very solid players, and that’s what we’re trying to do,” Gentry said. “We may not have that one go-to guy, but we’ll have somebody on most nights with a hot hand. It’s my job, as a coach, to find that player and ride that guy. That’s the way I look at it.”

And Gentry said that, at some point, a go-to player emerges from a team, even if he isn’t recognized as a “star.”

“There will be a guy you find out you can consistently go to, who is going to make a play for you or get you a basket,” he said. “We’ll search for that until we find it.”

Maybe it will be Michael Beasley, who has shown he can be a big-time scorer at times. Maybe it will be Dudley, who makes up for what he lacks in talent with a high basketball IQ and gritty work. Maybe it will be Dragic, who seemed to be emerging as a potential star in Houston last season.

“We just have to be a family on the court and off the court and find that right chemistry,” Dragic said. “Then maybe on some nights, J.D. scores 20. Another night, somebody else. We just have to stick together.

“I’m the point guard, and I have to involve all of my teammates. Some nights, it will be different teammates. If everybody is hot, then it’s easy for me.”

Gentry believes that Beasley has the talent to be a star in the NBA, if he can become consistent. He might be now had he not started his career on a team with Dwyane Wade in Miami then moved to Minnesota to play with Kevin Love, both regarded as superstars.

Dragic has seen the potential.

“Michael is a great basketball player, a great teammate,” Dragic said. “He can shoot, dribble the ball, he can pass. For his size, he’s unbelievable. We just have to find him the right spot in our system, and I think he’s going to be fine.”

Are the Suns a championship contender? Not hardly.

But they weren’t before Nash departed to the Lakers. Can they sneak into the playoffs? History says even that is a lot to ask.

The good news is, if the Suns bottom out, that often is the best way to obtain a superstar either through the draft, or a sign-and-trade deal for a free agent.

“If you look at a lot of these superstars, they work hard to perfect their craft year after year,” Dudley said. “With that said, a lot of them don’t get out of the first round of the playoffs.

“You have to have role players. You need pieces. If you don’t have one star, you better have a bunch of really good players. And we have that.”

Reach Young at 602-320-9145 or bob.young@arizonarepublic.com. Follow him on Twitter @BobYoungTHI.

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